You might remember the baseball player who went by that name: Cal Ripken Jr., who set a major league record for consecutive games played over a span of more than 16 years.

Burnett might not swing much of a bat (golf’s his game anyway), but he’s got even Ripken beat in one way: For nearly 22 years, he has designed every single set that has gone up on the stage of North Coast Rep.

That tally reached an astounding 150 with the Solana Beach theater’s most recent show, David Ives’ comedy “The School for Lies.”

Backstage snapshot

Name: Marty Burnett

Lives in: Solana Beach

Originally from: Nebraska

Education: Creighton University

Least proud of: The set from “Apocalyptic Butterflies” (1994): “It was just too many locations and I cluttered it too much. I wasn’t very happy with it. It just overwhelmed me.”

Most proud of: “The one I’m working on now.”

Inspirations: “I’m so lucky to have the volunteers we have here. I have volunteers who have worked with me for 20 years.”

Just about every theater, of course, has its favored designers, directors, actors and playwrights whose work is featured frequently. But to rely solely on a single designer for a period of two decades?

That’s unprecedented in San Diego, and (although it’s a hard thing to confirm) probably nationally as well. And it doesn’t count the sets Burnett also has done for North Coast Rep’s youth productions, nor his outside jobs for other theaters while on the NCRT staff.

Burnett’s streak is even more remarkable when you consider that it has spanned three artistic administrations — those of NCRT co-founder Olive Blakistone, Sean Murray (now artistic leader of Cygnet Theatre) and current artistic director David Ellenstein.

But mention any of this to the soft-spoken Burnett, who is 59, and he tends to joke or shrug it off.

“I don’t know — I’m very fortunate,” he says. “I have a full-time job doing theater in Southern California. I’m not a gypsy. I have a home here, through three artistic directors. I’m very lucky.”

Also very resourceful. Not only does Burnett design all of the sets, he constructs them almost single-handedly as well.

“A lot of designers will just do the plans and then send them off,” he says. “I kind of love designing them from the model and executing them.”

Burnett does team with NCRT veteran John Finkbiner (whom he calls “the last of a dying breed — the true scenic artist”), plus theater volunteers, to finish the sets. Then he ferries the pieces from the company’s Carlsbad scene shop to the theater — in his own truck.

Ellenstein first met Burnett when both worked on a 2001 production of Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” for the now-defunct Renaissance Theatre Company in downtown San Diego.

When Ellenstein was hired to lead NCRT in 2003 and began putting a team together, “the one thing I heard over and over again was how good Marty was,” he says.

“He’s amazing. He always manages to morph that space into a different feel with every show we do. He has some signature architecture that he knows works in there — I sometimes recognize the geometry of how he relates to the house, because there’s only so much you can do.

“But the way he tends to detail and adorn it is always specific to the show, it’s always creative, it’s always inventive. He’s always coming up with new stuff.

“And he’s always excited about every play.”

Man of the moment

Burnett has been excited about show business since the day he saw “Citizen Kane” in a film class at Creighton University (in his home state of Nebraska) and was inspired to take an acting class.

“It was the only thing in college I did extremely well at,” he says now.

Burnett kept acting even after moving to San Diego, where one of his brothers lived. But then Coronado Playhouse, where he’d done several onstage roles, needed a designer, and Burnett volunteered.

Although he had no training in the discipline, “I think I just had an innate ability to put things together proportionally,” he says.

He polished his craft through a long association with the late James “Biff” Baker, who was a drama instructor at Grossmont College and later Burnett’s partner in a set design and construction business.

“He taught me how not to cut my fingers off, which is a good lesson,” Burnett notes.

Marty Burnett works on the set for North Coast Rep's world-premiere production of "Mandate Memories."
— Charlie Neuman

Marty Burnett works on the set for North Coast Rep's world-premiere production of "Mandate Memories."
— Charlie Neuman

His first NCRT set — the one that started the still-running string of 150 straight — was a July 1992 production of “Chekhov in Yalta,” directed by Rosina Reynolds.

Then as now, Burnett says, the job has been all about fresh challenges. As he speaks during a weekday break at the theater, Burnett turns to a couple of nearby set models to illustrate the point.

“I’m sick of this one,” he says, pointing to the mock-up for the sumptuously designed “School for Lies,” which just closed. “But I love this one,” he adds, indicating the model for the theater’s world-premiere production of “Mandate Memories,” which begins performances April 9.

After all these years working in one theater, “you’d think I’d get tired of it, but I don’t, because everything’s different,” Burnett adds. “Hopefully the sets don’t all look the same. You try to change them up and be creative.”

Given the limitations of North Coast Rep’s space, that can be a challenge. The theater is shoehorned into the corner of a shopping mall; its stage, as Burnett notes, “is small and quirky. There’s no height. We do the best we can with the lighting. The highest I can go is the platform in the back, making sure no one bangs their head on a light.”

The theater also has virtually no backstage — the wall behind the performance area is also the back wall of the building. (Actors sometimes have to run out through the parking lot in order to make an entrance from the other side.)